Timothy Garton Ash: The French Said No Out of Fear

Timothy Garton Ash, in the Guardian (6-3-05)

[Mr. Ash is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is the author, most recently, of Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West. (April 2005)]

For the French to say no to Europe is like the English saying no to beef or the Russians saying no to vodka. Or perhaps like the heart saying no to the body.

Last Sunday the French did not just say no to a particular, cumbersome constitutional treaty, despite the fact that its main architect was a Frenchman. They said no to what the EU has become since the fall of the Berlin wall. No to a much-enlarged EU where France is no longer in the driving seat. No to the prospect of Turkish membership. No to Anglo-Saxon-style economic reform: deregulation, free-market liberalism, Thatcherism imported via Brussels. And, of course, no to lupine Jacques Chirac, and the Parisian governments and elites they feel have failed them.

This was a no of fear. Fear of losing your job to the now proverbial Polish plumber. Fear of immigration. Fear of change. The noes of the communists and the far right were quite different, but they had this one thing in common: fear...

...Optimists suggest that the ratification process can continue to its planned conclusion in 18 months' time - as Mr Chirac seemed to imply in his first reaction last Sunday night. The countries that have said no may even be asked to reconsider. Super-optimists suggest that, perhaps with some changes and reassurance from European leaders, the noes might be turned into yeses, like water into wine.

I don't believe it. On the spectrum between apocalypse and teething problem, I would put this crisis roughly half-way. A French no will give powerful encouragement to a Dutch no this week. If two founding members of the EU have rejected the treaty, Danish and Polish voters will hardly feel obliged to turn out to approve it later this year. And those dominoes could go on falling.

Either we then continue for another year or at some point European leaders will have to face up to the reality. That point may come during the British presidency of the EU, which begins in July. Here is probably the last big thing that Tony Blair can do, before handing over the premiership to Gordon Brown. He came to power in 1997 promising to resolve Britain's historical ambiguity over Europe. In that, he has so far failed. Now he has to confront something much larger: Europe's ambiguity about itself...

...The last time the French rejected a major European project was more than half a century ago, when the proposed European Defence Community was voted down in the French parliament. British diplomacy then cobbled together a substitute called the Western European Union. It wasn't half as good, but it was better than nothing. Last Sunday the French once again kicked the ball across the Channel, into Downing Street.